Germ

turning over and spurring the engine into action. A cloud of black smoke erupted from the tailpipe and engulfed the vehicle. Stephen punched the accelerator to escape the fumes, spewing sand and pebbles back at the smoky beast as it disappeared into the woods along the thin dirt drive.

twenty-six

The bar's windows were dark, its door shut, blocked by yellow crime scene tape. A police cruiser was parked directly in front of the entrance. Of course the place was guarded; the daylight massacre of a federal agent and his charge made it a red-ball case.

As Julia drove past, she saw a single patrolman behind the wheel. The dome light was on and he was reading a paperback. Smart, she thought. Destroy your night vision and make it easy for perps to see you before you see them.

She drove a few more blocks, turned left, and parked on a dark residential street behind an abused pickup. She popped the trunk lid and got out. From a metal bin in the trunk, she selected an assortment of rusty tools and a tire iron.

Traffic on Brainerd Road was light; she darted across unnoticed. She made her way to the trash-strewn alley that ran behind the businesses and turned toward the bar. The grungy backs of buildings towered above her on the right; an alternating cycle of tall pine and chain-link fencing lined her left. Tree limbs leaned over the boards, and leafy shrubs pushed through the fence. Purple Dumpsters hulked like sleeping bison at regular intervals. Where it wasn't pitch dark, it was deep gray. She trotted toward the bar.

On the way over, she'd used a pay phone to call the Chattanooga homicide desk. She'd given them the name of another female federal agent. A Detective Fisher was lead on the case. The on-call detective had offered to patch her through to him, but she'd said her involvement was too preliminary to bug him. She'd needed only a few facts: primarily, location and a basic chronology of the crime: Yeah, I know our people are all over it, but I'm just typing up a summary for my boss, and you know how it is, trying to get a straight answer from a team of twenty hotshots.

Two aspects of the crime were immediately intriguing. First, after Goody shot one of the assailants, the other was killed by a third assailant. The prevailing wisdom was that he had been a third member of the hit team who'd decided not to split the fee, though he could have been a separate hit man altogether, not associated with the first team, or some guy who'd stumbled onto the hit and acted to protect himself.

Then why'd he take out Despesorio Vero, as witnesses said he did?

That was the nature of crime investigations: anything goes, no matter how implausible, until other theories build more supportive tissue.

The other interesting element was a set of handcuffs found near Vero's body. According to the bartender, one of the first assailants had tossed them to Vero. You've got your target covered by a shotgun, and you tell him to cuff himself. You're not trying to kill him; you're trying to take him alive. Why?

She'd considered asking for access but quickly rejected the idea. If anyone in law enforcement saw her retrieve evidence, they could confiscate it. Plus, if the people behind Donnelley's murder had moles in law enforcement, could she trust any cop? No, she wanted to examine any evidence she found herself before turning it over to the investigative team—and only after she trusted the integrity of those involved.

She had reached the parking lot that flanked the side of the bar. The moon illuminated a single car, closer to her than the bar. It appeared empty. She ran all out, staying as close to the fence as the litter and bushes allowed.

The bar's back door and jamb were metal. A heavy-metal plate, welded to the door, covered the latch and dead bolt. Even the hinges were not exposed. The nearest window was barred. She tried the tire iron on the door. It didn't budge.

She shook her head. No way she was getting through it. She pulled out her CDC-LED badge and identification and marched out of the alley and along the side of the bar toward the cruiser. She stepped off the curb and went around the back of the car. She rapped on the driver's glass and leaned down.

The cruiser was empty. The dash-mounted lamp burned brightly; a Dean Koontz novel lay tented on the bench seat. But no cop. She stood and looked over the roof at the bar. She noticed its open front door. Just then, the windows flashed with light, and the peal of three rapid gunshots ripped into the night.

She ducked and withdrew her pistol. In the field, she kept a round chambered, saving the extra second it would take to pull the slide in an emergency. Still, she double-checked by pulling back on the slide a half inch. The brass casing of a .45-caliber bullet sparkled as it caught the streetlamp's glow. She lowered the gun to her side and pulled back on the hammer with her thumb.

She'd detected no impacts to the cruiser, so unless the shooter was an atrociously bad aim, the shots were not meant for her. She rushed to the door and slammed her back against the brick between the door and the huge front window. She threw her head around to look in the door and pulled it back in one quick motion. At the rear of the customer area the office door was half open. Weak light spilled out into the bar. Silhouettes of halogen lamps on tripods, left by the crime-scene techs. Had she noticed movement? She couldn't be sure. She looked again. Saw nothing.

Arms locked straight before her, pistol at chin-level, she swung around and stepped through the door. She panned her pistol to the right, toward the phone booth. Nothing. Back toward the rear of the bar. She smelled perspiration, her own, and the faint odor of blood and the much sharper tang of cordite. Now she saw the smoke, drifting lazily in the scant light from the office. She took another step. So dark.

She stopped at the edge of the bar counter, leaned over. The darkness was complete: she could be looking right at someone hiding down there and not know it. She didn't have a flashlight. She didn't want to turn on the bar lights—even if she did know where the switch was located.

Julia felt exposed. She put her gun and the palm of her other hand on the bar top, hoisted herself up, and dropped behind the counter. She felt shelves of glasses, cleaning supplies, bags of something, pretzels or nuts probably, then the thing she expected: a small refrigerator. She cracked the door open. White light burst from it, revealing an area behind the bar free of bad guys. She crouch-walked to the end of the bar and went around it.

She heard the metallic chink of door locks, then hinges creaking, fast and high- pitched. Someone had swung open the back door, the one she had tried to jimmy. She stood and ran toward the office, then stopped and crouched again. A body lay sprawled on the floor. The cop from the cruiser. He was spread-eagle, facing up, eyes open. The chest of his blue uniform glistened in a way it shouldn't have. He still clenched his gun in one hand; a flashlight had rolled several inches from the other. The dim office light caught the edges of the flashlight's shattered lens and bulb.

She squinted at the office door's porthole window over the top of her pistol. She scanned past the booths, then back to the office door. Bathroom doors ahead, on the left. She pivoted around to assess the area behind her, then back again. Only then did she move up to the body. Keeping her vision on the hovering white dot of her gun's front sight and the office door beyond, she reached down to feel his carotid artery. No pulse.

She stepped over him and moved quietly to the office door. A small, green-shaded lamp sat on a cluttered desk, casting the room's only light. The back door stood open.

Outside, a car door slammed. She ran through the combination office-storage room, weaving around stacked boxes and unused equipment. When she entered the alley, she spun left into the parking lot. A sedan was squealing out onto Brainerd, tires smoking, engine revved to critical mass. Julia raised her gun and fired three rapid shots. The back window shattered and rained out onto the trunk and blacktop like the jeweled train of a wedding gown. She started to squeeze off another round when the car disappeared beyond a building.

She dashed back through the back door, into the customer area, over the corpse, and directly to the phone booth. She holstered her weapon, stepped in, and shut the doors. The light flickered on. Not knowing what she was looking for, if it was breakable, she moved carefully. She stepped on the tiny seat and pushed her palms against the plastic light cover, raising it up. She contorted her hand up into the space between the panel and the area above it, slowly feeling around its circumference. The panel gave up its hold and fell past her to the floor. Ceiling and lighting fixture exposed, she found nothing. Next she checked the phone itself: the coin-return slot, the outside edges where it mounted to the booth. She used a pocketknife to pry the instruction card out of its metal frame. Nothing stashed behind, no messages written on it.

She was thinking about looking on the booth's roof when she slipped her hand beneath the seat and felt wads of rock-hard gum and firm, angular ridges that could be anything. Her heart stepped up its pace. She fell to her